- Paperback: 168 pages
- Publisher: Soft Editions Ltd (22 Aug 2004)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1843500809
- ISBN-13: 978-1843500803
- Product Dimensions: 21.6 x 14 x 1 cm
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,002,070 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
A Crystal Age
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Product Description
Product Description
Regaining consciousness, half-buried by a landslide after a fall in the mountains, a young man finds himself in a landscape he hardly recognises. Wandering through the country in search of a means to return to civilisation, he is given shelter by a family living in a great house in the middle of the wilderness. Trying to explain who he is and where he comes from he finds that his world is completely unknown, and his descriptions are regarded as delusions of a mind deranged by his recent fall. As he struggles to learn the rules and customs of a society very different from his own he falls in love with one of the daughters of the house, but finds that even love, as he knows it, is apparently unknown among his new people.
About the Author
English writer and naturalist, Hudson is chiefly famous for his exotic romances especially Green Mansions (1904). His early years were spent on the Argentine Pampas where he studied nature and specialized in ornithology. He came to England in 1874 and in 1900 became a British subject. His novel Green Mansions is regarded as a modern classic. Its protagonist Rima is Hudson's most famous creation. To commemorate Hudson, her statue was erected in 1925 in Hyde Park, London. Hudson wrote books on ornithology and the English countryside as well. The later category includes Afoot in England (1909), A Shepherd's Life (1910), Dead Man's Plack (1920), A Traveller in Little Things (1921), and A Hind in Richmond Park (1922). Hudson's works include The Purple Land that England Lost (1885), British Birds (1895), El Omb (1902), and The Book of a Naturalist (1919).
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4.3 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews)
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This is worth a second read - probably more....., 11 July 2004
By A. G. Plumb "Greg Plumb" - Published on Amazon.com
The pastoral nature of this novel is such a disguise for it ends with the toughest, grittiest and most challenging ending I have ever read (stronger than Kafka's 'The Trial', or Christopher Priest's 'The Separation'). As a human being facing what we all face this ending is truly awful. But what is Hudson telling us in this novel? Is it a Victorian approach to telling things that are otherwise inexpressible - that affection is not enough? That real love with all its manifestations must be honoured, because without it there is only death?
Here I find a challenge to psychoanalysis and all the techniques of psychology: 'I only discovered, what others have discovered before me, that the practice of introspection has a corrosive effect on the mind, which only serves to aggravate the malady it is intended to cure.' (If only I could stop introspection ......!) ) [page 279 Dutton edition of 1917]
But here the common man, Smith, plunged into this affectionate pastoral society, bemoans what he has just learned - that the young woman he loves can never love him as he wishes - 'I wish that I had never made that fatal discovery, that I might have continued still hoping and dreaming, and wearing out my heart with striving after the impossible, since any fate would have been preferable to the blank desolation which now confronted me.' [page 303-304 of the same edition]
I wonder what woman of Hudson's acquaintance he had to put aside with such enormous regret that he expressed these words!
Search this book out. Absorb its gentle fantasy and hold tight for a rough ending.
Other recommendations:
The Separation - Christopher Priest
The Trial - Franz Kafka
The Shepherd's Life - W H Hudson
Green Mansions - W H Hudson
13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This will take you to unexpected places, 23 Feb 2001
By A. G. Plumb "Greg Plumb" - Published on Amazon.com
JB Priestly wrote a book about time ('Man and Time') and in it he referred to a WH Hudson novel called 'A Crystal Age'. His couple of paragraphs about 'A Crystal Age' stimulated my interest but nowhere could I find the novel he referred to. However, I did find 'Green Mansions' and I have read it several times. It is a beautiful novel with an undertone of darkness (is death the darkness that we all live with during the beauty of life?). Perhaps 'Green Mansions' disappointed me a little after triggering my romantic nerve. I did, however, keep exploring the writings of WH Hudson - 'Long Ago and Far Away', 'The Purple Land', 'Idle Days in Patagonia' and the wonderful 'A Shepherd's Life'. I have just finished reading 'A Crystal Age' at last. I concur with JB Priestley's assessment. 'A Crystal Age' is worth the effort of pursuing - it is a surprising first-person utopian novel in which Hudson's love of nature does not render him oblivious to the fact that there are downsides in all worlds - all imaginable worlds. Just like the dark shadows in 'Green Mansions'. The end of 'A Crystal Age' is so surprising - I believe very few readers would see what is coming - I certainly didn't as I rushed on towards it. There is a certain illogic to the ending, but there is also something that haunts me continuously.
'A Crystal Age' is a stronger less romantic novel than 'Green Mansions', but it is also exceptional for many reasons. I don't hesitate in recommending 'Green Mansions' but I also urge readers to pursue 'A Crystal Age'.
0 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not what I thought I was buying., 20 Sep 2010
By D. Spini - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: A Crystal Age (Kindle Edition)
Written well, but I wasn't expecting a fiction title. I was looking for something else.
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